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[Ed note: I've compiled several recent messages on sports and utopia into a single series for convenience.--Peter Sands] From: Andy Sawyer [mailto:A.P.Sawyer@liverpool.ac.uk] Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 3:42 AM To: H-NET List for Utopian Studies Subject: Re: Sport in Utopia In one of Kim Stanley Robinson's Pacific Edge books, a lot of handball is played. ---------------------- Andy Sawyer Science Fiction Librarian Special Collections and Archives University of Liverpool Library PO Box 123, Liverpool L69 3DA, UK. Reviews Editor: Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction asawyer@liv.ac.uk The Science Fiction Foundation Collection webpage: http://www.liv.ac.uk/~asawyer/sffchome.html The Science Fiction Foundation: http://www.sf-foundation.org/ "... there is no higher life form than a librarian." THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD: Terry Pratchett, Jack Cohen, and Ian Stewart, p. 10. *************************** From: Sheryl LeSage [mailto:sjlesage@ou.edu] Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 8:57 AM To: H-NET List for Utopian Studies Subject: Re: Sport in utopia This is an interesting discussion to me--I think it's entirely appropriate to the list, fwiw. I taught a writing course last semester based on the idea of utopia. One thing my students noticed very early on was that there was some allowance made for sport (or at least games) in all the selections we read. The books were drawn from more than just modern capitalist writers, of course. Aggression might be distasteful, but it keeps showing up in human societies, regardless of their social or political organization. Maybe competitive physically-demanding sports are a way of channeling that aggression? I have known boys and men for whom I am very glad there is a football team (or the Marines) to drain their energies. Of course I don't know if energies are really redirected this way or just intensified and justified... But let's recall that several of the more popular sports in the U.S. originated as Iroquois or Cherokee team sports. The Cherokee, not known for their capitalist tendencies before 'discovery,' played a particularly bloody type of a thing that was sort of a mix between rugby and lacrosse. Each town fielded a team, and the games, plus the various preparations that led up to them, took several days. Men were sometimes killed playing. I suspect there was originally more of a religious reason for the sport (like the Mayan 'ball game'), and it wasn't just a way for one town to lord their athletic prowess over the people down the way, but competition and aggression was very definitely a major part of the activity. I'm not suggesting that N.A. cultures were/are in any way utopian. Just that sport and competitive aggression can't be merely an outgrowth of the industrial revolution in the West. -- Sheryl LeSage English Department U of Oklahoma sjlesage@ou.edu *************************** From: Jeff Gorbski [mailto:jelyky@email.msn.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2002 8:58 PM To: H-NET List for Utopian Studies Subject: Re: Sport in Utopia [3 messages] [1] Ed Kunin brings up some new issues in the question of competition and utopia. He writes that "[i]n these days of political correctness, we forget we are not identical and there is no reason to treat ourselves as if we are... The fact that some people run faster than others does not mean that we are not equal at a more profound level.. We die. In that we are equal. Next to that differences are insignificant. We can have competitive games and utopia. What I don't understand it why anyone thinks we can't. Mr. Kunin seems to link competition with a celebration of difference, especially when viewed in the grand scheme of things. Yet, if competition is not that significant, why all the effort to argue why sport/competition ought to remain in utopias? Why not do without competition? Why infuse within a utopian society, an environment in which people work together to solve problems, an institution like sport and an ideology like competition whose foundations are grounded on the premise that one's success is based upon the forced failure of another. Challenges to ourselves do spur improvement. But do these challenges need to be based on antagonistic relationships with fellow humans? Can we not perform challenging tasks while working together to achieve common goals? If competition truly were the best method for improvement, then working together is actually an impediment to social and personal advance. But this doesn't seem intuitively right. Rather, when something really important needs to be done, people come together and cooperate. As Mr. Kunin quoted Horace Mann, "be ashamed to die until you've done something for humanity," I wonder if competition is the way to that end. One wonders how running a sub-four minute mile does anything to improve humanity, especially to the residents of sub-Saharan Africa? Before the four minute mile, we had world poverty and starvation. After the four minute mile, we still had world poverty and starvation. Competition doesn't improve the world. Competition gets in the way of global improvement because in a competitive environment, at most only half of the participants succeed. The rest fail. Just imagine how quickly the world would improve if people cooperate and not compete. We may not have the phenomenal wealth reserved solely to ourselves, but we would probably be able to better live with ourselves. The positive side is that we in the US are winning the global battle for political and economic dominance. The negative is that our winning is creating a whole bunch of losers. [2] Thanks for your reply, Ellen. As to your question, "I wonder whether all competition is about aggression, and whether all expression of aggression is inherently anti-utopian or pro-capitalist," it can be stated that all competition derives from aggression, but aggression does not have to lead to competition. It is just a matter of how we channel the aggression and the avenues available for that channeling. What is harder for me to understand is the following statement: "...that much of the way sports are structured in the U.S. makes competition the most important (if not only) thing, but that sports itself is not necessarily that." Is not necessarily what? Competitive? Aggressive? An avenue in which competition is most important? Sport, by its very nature, is a competitive act. Without competition, there is no sport. And competition, by its very structure and ideology, is doomed to constantly create excess. That is the single reason why sportsmanship, something that has nothing whatsoever to do with competition, is inserted into competition. It is there solely to try to temper the inherent excessiveness of competition, and make competition more palatable to people. You further commented that some games, like hackysack and Frisbee, though not always may be played competitively and aggressively: "Even in games such as the ones you mention above or in "seesaw" or climbing on the jungle gym, people sometimes express their play as aggression and competition, "I can climb higher than you," "I can bump you harder than you bumped me when you came down," on the jungle gym and see saw respectively. Play is often an opportunity to work out aggression and to heal or process emotions that one is having trouble dealing with directly. These games or play situations are designed for participants, but they aren't necessarily aggression-free." To some extent I agree. Play and games can be either aggressive of non-aggressive, competitive, non-coimpetitive, or cooperative. But the range from competitive to cooperative is based on choices we make. Competition and cooperation are learned behaviors. We choose to compete and we choose to cooperate. We may be naturally aggressive or naturally nurturing, but as state above, we do not have to have to both aggressive and competitive. Aggressive acts can be focused towards non-animate objects. Competition is always against an animate object, one which is actively competing in turn. The monkey bars and the see-saw do not cause competition, though they may be avenues for aggressive expression. One may say, "I can climb higher than you," but one can also say, "Let's see how high we can both climb." In the former case, aggression is directed against the opponent; in the latter, aggression is directed against the monkey bars. [3] I am fascinated by Mr. Kunin's interesting (though not totally unexpected) response to the idea of eliminating competition in utopia. He states: "Utopia to many minds implies a diminution of individuality. Jeff's latest post is a case in point." I fail to see the correlation. At no point have I ever stated that eliminating competition or promoting cooperation diminishes individuality. Rather, the evidence has shown the exact opposite. Competitive arenas require everyone to abide by the same rules, wear the same clothes, act in the same expected way, use the same facilities, etc. Competition, in order to function, demands uniformity. One cannot have a competition of oranges, if one includes apples, plums, or grapes. On the other hand, promoting cooperation does not promote a decline in individuality. People who cooperate quickly learn who has skills and abilities which permits the group to tackle a variety of tasks. In order or everyone to succeed, a cooperatve group must know and utilize everyone special talents. It is cooperation that promotes individuality (which is different than promoting the individual). Mr. Kunin continues with further statements which seem to make points out of paper tigers. For example, he writes that "[w]e learn that kickers kick further when not charged by the defensive line... Is the conclusion to be drawn that football has no place in utopia?" Such a conclusion was never drawn by me, and I would be a fool to do so if that is the extent of what I said. There are many more steps which need to be taken before such a connection can be made. Steps never taken because the statement was never meant to imply that particular conclusion. But, no matter. What is more interesting is Mr. Kunin's later comment where he states that, though cooperation is fine and probably more common in utopias, we must not prohibit competitive sports "because they supposedly engender aggression." After all, "[d]oes anyone here really believe competitive games make societies or humans more dangerous?" I'm not sure if competitive games make society more dangerous, though there is evidence that watching violent sports tends to create violent spectators, even among spectators who don't drink alcohol. Spectators who watch less violent sports tend to be less aggressive. People who watch hockey, for example, walk away with higher levels of adrenalin than people who watch track and field. However, I do believe that the competitive ideology, one that states that my success is based upon the forced failure of another, can do nothing but develop divisions between individuals. Competition is not the answer if we are trying to foster a more cohesive and more pro-social community. To promote competition, of any type, promotes a pathological activity. ******************************************* From: Richard D. Erlich To: jelyky@email.msn.com Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2002 8:42 PM Subject: Rejected posting JEFF GORBSKI CONCLUDED HIS RESPONSE TO ELLEN: >From: Jeff Gorbski [mailto:jelyky@email.msn.com] >* * * > In the end, there is hardly any difference between sports and >business. As some philosphers have indicated, the fact the people find >watching sports enjoyable means that we are slowly losing our link to >play, as we become more and more drawn to what we now think of as play >-- sport. Essentially, we are coming to enjoy the very thing we are >trying to escape, which is exactly what a market-capitalist society >would want us to do. > > >Jeff Gorbski I have a question for Jeff and others on the list knowledgeable about sport. I was disheartened to see frisbee go competitive, and it looks like similar competition has been added even to skateboarding. Indeed a champion skateboarder appeared in a commercial I saw on The Daily Show (a spoof of news shows), where the skateboarder was emphatically an Authority figure for teenage boys. Any ideas on relative importance of the causes of introduced competition? Since a colleague in SF studies admitted to competing once with her brothers on writing one's name in snow, uh, micturationally, I'll allow that some kids will compete at anything. So some kids themselves may have come up with ways to score skateboarding and frisbee. Still, that just pushes back the question to where the kids got the idea. When I brought one stray cat and then another into my household of one cat, I got to see some straight-forward status games that reminded me of more complex games at a Department meeting or some conferences I no longer attend. More seriously, we humans do seem to be status-conscious animals, and I wonder if status is important here. Young status-conscious human animals embedded in a culture that rewards success in competition might come up with new games at which they can win. (The Daily Show is on the Comedy Channel along quiz shows for geeks, bowling, and gladiatorial games for robots.) Rich Erlich *************** From: john crowley [mailto:jcrowley@crocker.com] Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2002 7:44 AM To: H-UTOPIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU Subject: Sports and Competition [2 messages] [1] Doesn't Fourier encourage sports and public competitions of all kinds, in the belief that honors, rituals, processions, and triumphs give pleasure to certain personalities? I remember that there were elaborate distinguishing costumes for competitors from different phalansteries when they met. John Crowley NOTE! New Business/Day Phone Number for John Crowley: 413/369-0250 [2] In a novel I wrote in the non-competitive peace-seeking late 60s, I came up with a game played in a communal future society, the goal of which was cooperation and speed and skill in which all players joined. (I hold no particular brief for the inherent value of such a game, I just thought it would be necessary in such a commune, and fun to think up.) The book is called Engine Summer, and the game is called Whose Knee?. The rules are complicated. After the narrator describes them, an interlocutor asks how you win. "Win?" says the narrator. "You're not fighting, you're playing a game." John Crowley NOTE! New Business/Day Phone Number for John Crowley: 413/369-0250
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